Bird's-eye view
In this sobering passage, the Apostle Paul, writing his final letter, gives his protege Timothy a stark and unvarnished look at the future. He is not to be naive. The Christian life is warfare, and the nature of the times will reflect this. Paul commands Timothy to "know this," to take it as a settled fact, that the "last days" will be characterized by severe difficulty. This difficulty is not primarily about economic hardship or natural disasters, but rather a profound moral and spiritual decay that will manifest itself even within the visible church. Paul provides a lengthy and detailed vice list, a spiritual diagnosis of a culture given over to the love of self, which is the fountainhead of all other sins listed. The climax of this description is the most insidious characteristic of all: these people maintain an external "form of godliness" while utterly denying the supernatural, transforming power of the gospel. Paul's instruction is unequivocal: avoid such people. He then illustrates their methodology, showing how they prey on the vulnerable and unstable, and compares them to the ancient magicians of Pharaoh's court, Jannes and Jambres, who opposed Moses. The encouragement, however, is that their opposition is ultimately futile. Just as the magicians' folly was exposed, so too will the bankruptcy of these modern opponents of the truth be made plain to all.
This is not a passage to make us despair, but to make us prepare. It is a call to discernment, to recognize that the greatest dangers to the church often come from within, cloaked in the language of piety. It is a summons to be grounded in the truth and to understand that the Christian faith is not a mere set of ethical principles or religious observances, but a radical, life-altering encounter with the power of the risen Christ.
Outline
- 1. The Character of the Last Days (2 Tim 3:1-9)
- a. The Certainty of Difficult Times (2 Tim 3:1)
- b. The Catalogue of Godless Character (2 Tim 3:2-5a)
- i. The Root Sin: Love of Self and Money (2 Tim 3:2a)
- ii. Sins of Pride and Blasphemy (2 Tim 3:2b)
- iii. Sins of Relational Breakdown (2 Tim 3:2c-3a)
- iv. Sins of Unrestrained Passion (2 Tim 3:3b-4)
- c. The Hollow Religion (2 Tim 3:5b)
- d. The Pastoral Response: Avoidance (2 Tim 3:5c)
- e. The Method of the Deceivers (2 Tim 3:6-7)
- f. The Historical Parallel and Final Futility (2 Tim 3:8-9)
Context In 2 Timothy
Second Timothy is Paul's last will and testament. He is in a Roman prison, awaiting execution, and he writes to his "beloved child" Timothy to charge him to carry on the ministry of the gospel. The letter is intensely personal and urgent. In chapter 1, Paul urges Timothy not to be ashamed of the gospel or of Paul, its prisoner. In chapter 2, he uses a series of metaphors (soldier, athlete, farmer) to exhort Timothy to endure hardship and to handle the word of truth correctly, contrasting faithful ministry with the "godless chatter" of false teachers like Hymenaeus and Philetus. Chapter 3 flows directly from this contrast. Having just described the solid foundation of God, Paul now describes the moral chaos that will characterize those who depart from that foundation. The warnings in 3:1-9 provide the dark backdrop against which Paul's charge to Timothy to continue in the Scriptures (3:10-17) and to preach the word (4:1-5) shines so brightly. The peril of the times necessitates the perseverance of the saints.
Key Issues
- The Meaning of "The Last Days"
- The Nature of Christian Hedonism vs. Self-Love
- The Relationship Between Doctrine and Character
- The Definition of a "Form of Godliness"
- The Identity of Jannes and Jambres
- Church Discipline and the Command to "Avoid"
- The Inevitable Exposure of Folly
The Last Days Are These Days
When modern Christians hear the phrase "the last days," we are conditioned to think of a period of time way off in the future, right before the Second Coming. But this is not the New Testament's perspective. The "last days" began with the first coming of Christ. The writer to the Hebrews says that God, "in these last days has spoken to us by His Son" (Heb 1:2). Peter, preaching at Pentecost, quotes Joel and says that the outpouring of the Spirit is the fulfillment of what was prophesied for "the last days" (Acts 2:17). So, the entire era between the first and second advents of Christ is, biblically speaking, "the last days."
This means that Paul is not giving Timothy a prophecy about something that would only begin to happen two thousand years later. He is describing the character of the age in which Timothy was already living, and in which we are now living. The moral decay he describes is not a sign that the end is necessarily tomorrow, but rather a description of the constant pressure the world, the flesh, and the devil will exert upon the church throughout this entire epoch. The spirit of antichrist is already at work (1 John 4:3). These difficult times are not coming; they are here. And they have been here since the church was born. The intensity may ebb and flow, but the nature of the battle remains the same.
Verse by Verse Commentary
1 But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
Paul begins with a command: "Know this." This is not speculation; it is a fixed point of truth that must inform Timothy's entire ministry. The word for "difficult" is chalepos, which can also be translated as hard, harsh, fierce, or savage. It is the same word used to describe the two demon-possessed men in the country of the Gadarenes, who were "exceedingly fierce" (Matt 8:28). This is not a prediction of mere inconvenience. It is a warning of a savage spiritual hostility that will characterize the age. The church is not a playground; it is a battlefield.
2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
Paul now unpacks the reason for these difficult times. The difficulty is not external, but internal. It resides in the character of fallen humanity. He begins with the root of all the other sins: men will be lovers of self (philautoi). This is the great inversion of the two great commandments. Instead of loving God and neighbor, men love self. This is the essence of original sin. From this polluted spring flows the love of money, because money is the instrument by which the self seeks to secure its own pleasure and power. What follows is the outworking of this self-worship. The self-lover is boastful and arrogant, constantly promoting himself. He is a blasphemer, speaking evil of God and man. He is disobedient to parents, rejecting the most basic and foundational authority structure God has established. He is ungrateful, because the self-lover believes he deserves everything he has. And he is unholy, devoid of reverence for God.
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, without gentleness, without love for good,
The list continues, detailing the social breakdown that results from self-love. They are unloving, literally "without natural affection," describing a monstrous lack of the basic familial love that should characterize human beings. They are irreconcilable, refusing to make peace, holding onto grudges because their pride has been wounded. They are malicious gossips (diaboloi, the same word for "devils"), using their words to destroy others for their own advantage. They are without self-control, slaves to their appetites. They are without gentleness, or brutal and savage. And they are without love for good, having a settled aversion to that which is morally excellent.
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
The catalog of corruption deepens. They are treacherous, betraying confidences and friendships. They are reckless, acting with rash, headlong passion. They are conceited, literally "puffed up" with a cloud of their own self-importance. And then Paul summarizes the entire motivation with a devastating contrast: they are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. This is the fundamental choice facing every human heart. You will be a hedonist, but the question is where you will seek your pleasure. The ungodly man seeks it in the fleeting gratifications of the self. The Christian is also a hedonist, a true hedonist, who has discovered that the only lasting and true pleasure is found in God Himself. As the Psalmist says, "at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Ps 16:11).
5 holding to a form of godliness, but having denied its power. Keep away from such men as these.
This is the most terrifying characteristic on the list, because it brings this entire cesspool of depravity right inside the doors of the church. These are not pagan atheists. These are people who maintain the external structures of religion. They go to church, carry their Bibles, use the right vocabulary. They have the form, the outward shape (morphosis), of godliness. But they have denied its power. The power of godliness is the Holy Spirit, who regenerates the dead heart, breaks the dominion of sin, and produces true holiness from the inside out. They deny this power practically, by their godless lives, and often theologically, by reducing Christianity to a set of moral rules or therapeutic principles. Their religion is a dead husk. Paul's instruction to Timothy is not to dialogue with them or try to reform them, but a sharp, decisive command: Keep away from such men. This is a command for ecclesiastical separation.
6-7 For among them are those who enter into households and take captive weak women weighed down with sins, being led on by various desires, always learning and never able to come to the full knowledge of the truth.
Paul now illustrates how these religious frauds operate. They are spiritual predators. They "creep into" or "worm their way into" households, a phrase that suggests a slithering, surreptitious approach. Their targets are "weak women," which is not a statement about women in general, but about a certain type of person who is spiritually unstable. The Greek is literally "little women," which might carry a sense of contempt. These are women who are vulnerable because they are weighed down with sins and a guilty conscience, and are therefore susceptible to anyone who promises a quick fix. They are led by their various desires, making them easy prey for teachers who scratch their itching ears. The tragic result is that they are always learning, flitting from one new teaching to the next, accumulating religious information, but are never able to come to the full knowledge of the truth. They never arrive at a settled, saving, sanctifying knowledge of Christ because they are not seeking truth, but rather emotional or spiritual titillation.
8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, disqualified in regard to the faith.
To show that this kind of opposition is nothing new, Paul reaches back into Old Testament history. Jannes and Jambres are the traditional names, drawn from Jewish Targums, for the two lead magicians in Pharaoh's court who opposed Moses by replicating his miracles (Ex 7:11, 22). The parallel is precise. Just as the magicians used counterfeit power to resist God's true messenger, so these false teachers use a counterfeit godliness to oppose the truth. Their opposition is not an intellectual disagreement; it is a moral and spiritual resistance rooted in a depraved mind. Their thinking is corrupt, and consequently, when it comes to the faith, they are disqualified, like a counterfeit coin that is rejected when tested.
9 But they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as theirs was also.
The final word is one of encouragement for Timothy. Though these men seem successful, their progress is limited. There is a point at which God says, "No further." Just as the magicians could replicate the first few plagues but were ultimately stopped, confessing "This is the finger of God" (Ex 8:19), their modern counterparts will also be exposed. Their folly, their spiritual insanity, will eventually become obvious to all. God in His providence will ensure that their hypocrisy is unmasked. The truth will out. This is a promise that should steady the heart of every faithful pastor who is contending with the wolves in sheep's clothing.
Application
The first and most obvious application of this text is a personal one. We must read this vice list not as a description of "those people out there," but as a mirror to our own hearts. The root sin is self-love, and that is the native orientation of every fallen human being, including redeemed ones. We must be diligent to mortify our own love of self, love of money, and love of pleasure, and to cultivate by the Spirit a supreme love for God. We must ask ourselves if our Christianity is a matter of external form, or if we are genuinely experiencing and submitting to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. A powerless Christianity is not Christianity at all.
Second, this passage is a crucial guide for pastoral ministry and church life. We are commanded to be discerning. We must not be naive about the fact that there are predators who operate within the visible church. We must be on guard against teaching that minimizes sin, denies the supernatural, and caters to the desires of the flesh. And when such men are identified, the biblical response is not endless tolerance, but decisive separation. We are to "keep away from such men." This requires courage and a commitment to biblical church discipline.
Finally, this passage gives us a rugged, realistic hope. We are not to be surprised or dismayed by the wickedness of our times. God told us it would be this way. But we are also not to despair. The opponents of the truth will not ultimately prevail. Their folly will be exposed. God's truth, and God's true people, will be vindicated in the end. Our job is not to fix the world, but to be faithful to the Word in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, holding out the gospel of power as the only hope for lovers of self to be transformed into lovers of God.